Laraine Day, 87, actress for MGM

November 14, 2007|By Aljean Harmetz The New York Times

Laraine Day, a popular actress who appeared in almost two dozen MGM movies during Hollywood's Golden Age, notably as the nurse Mary Lamont in a series of Dr. Kildare movies, died Saturday in Ivins, Utah. She was 87.

Her death, at the home of her daughter, Gigi Bell, was announced by her publicist. She had moved to Utah in March after the death of her husband of 47 years, producer Michel M. Grilikhes.

For several years Ms. Day was often called "the first lady of baseball" for her earlier marriage to Leo Durocher, the Hall of Fame manager of what were then the Brooklyn Dodgers and the New York Giants.

After she married Durocher in 1947, she was the host of Day With the Giants, a 15-minute television interview program broadcast before New York Giants home games.

Never a major star, Ms. Day was relegated to what she called "B+ movies" at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer from 1939 to 1945. Ms. Day captured roles in A movies only when she was loaned to other studios.

In 1940, Alfred Hitchcock borrowed her to star with Joel McCrea in the spy thriller Foreign Correspondent. RKO had her play the virtuous society girl who reforms a gambling ship owner (Cary Grant) in Mr. Lucky (1943). And Paramount borrowed her at the request of the director Cecil B. DeMille to play the steadfast nurse at the side Gary Cooper in The Story of Dr. Wassell (1944).

By the time DeMille was planning Dr. Wassell, Ms. Day had played nurse Mary Lamont seven times in the Dr. Kildare films.

"After seeing me in so many Kildares, I was naturally the only one who could play a nurse and knew the proper instruments," Ms. Day said.

Though some sources give Ms. Day's birthday as Oct. 13, 1917, the more likely date, and the one given on her death, is 1920. One of eight children, including a twin brother, she was born Laraine Johnson in Roosevelt, Utah, to a prosperous Mormon family.